


exhumāre

by shslprisoner



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, M/M, No Despair, Slow Burn, gonta and gundham be like am autistic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 02:19:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17194643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shslprisoner/pseuds/shslprisoner
Summary: exhumare ——  ex + humare, infinitive of exhumo. first conj. latin.—  meaning to uncover or unbury; to find.





	exhumāre

**Author's Note:**

> \- whats up guys and welcome back to judas' raired paired fanned fictions
> 
> \- anyways this is the longest thing ive ever written. poured my heart into this bitch! im tired man ive been writing this since march i dont even fucking like dr anymore
> 
> \- enjoy anyways i guess

It’s summer when Gonta gets found.  
  
Found is a funny word, Gonta thought, as his parents clutched him close to their chests. It made it sound as if he were lost. Gonta didn’t think he was lost. He knew where he was. He knew the whole forest inside out.  
  
He expressed this to his parents one afternoon in fall. He was 13. His dad gave him a glance, then went back to staring into the autumn air. His father patted him on the back. Their strained smiles told him to keep this thought to himself.  
  
The world was strange. He didn’t know if it was just him that felt like this, or if it was universal. Gonta wasn’t sure how to act, really, when it came to most things. He was an oaf, so they said. Clumsy. Strong, sure, and quick to learn, but never did well on tests. A genius with the testing IQ of a housecat.  
  
He traveled from school to school, from speech therapist to speech therapist, from diagnosis to diagnosis. Some said his time “lost” (Not lost, Gonta thinks, because he never really was) had affected the way he had matured. Others said he was strange from the beginning. Others wanted to cut open his head and poke around, to wonder at the marvel that was he. One said there was nothing wrong at all.  
  
Gonta couldn’t care. He had found other passions.  
  
This seemed to please his parents. They didn’t have much time for him. Busy people, they were, his dad always getting calls from some important scientist telling him coordinates and angles. His father wasn’t there a lot.  
  
“He’s visiting Europe,” His dad had said one afternoon as snow fell outside their window and coated the unruly lawn with a blanket of white. “Helping with conservation efforts. He’ll be back soon.”  
  
He wasn’t. Oh, he came back, sure, but after that, it was off to America and to the wolves, then bison, then to the forests of the Congo on a wild goose chase looking for Mokele Mbembe.  
  
But he had his books. While his dad was off doing his rocket science, he was contented to sit in the backyard and read. They started him on kindergarten books, which he tore through fast, onto the next thing and the next and the next. For his 14th birthday, his father got him a copy of The Jungle. His dad had laughed, pushing his father lightly on the shoulder.  
  
“That’s so typical of you,” He had said. Gonta wondered whether it should be now or later that he mentions that he has no memories of his father outside of the last year.  
  
It turns out the time was later. On a morning in early spring, he asks his father about it before he leaves on another trip. His father chuckled (Gonta’s pretty sure he’d never seen him laugh fully,) and told him he had known his dad in school. He had been a big part of the search for Gonta, he had said, He was the one who finally got the lead. A wolf had told him. Or so he claims.  
  
And that’s where Gonta’s first lie came from. When they finally shipped him off to boarding school as they had always talked about doing, he stopped telling people about bugs the first time they met. He started telling them he was raised by wolves.  
  
It was through this lie that he met Ouma Kokichi. Ouma always said he could spot a fibber from a mile away, and had sauntered up to Gonta on the first day and told him to tell the class more about his wolf family. Gonta recounted stories of his forest family, but this time instead of lizards it was wolves and instead of hunting bugs they hunted rabbits. They turned out to be roommates, much to Ouma’s delight and everyone else's chagrin. The combination of Ouma’s cunning will and quick wit with Gonta’s mild naivety and good heart turned out to be somewhat disastrous. They stayed roommates for a grand total of a week and a half.  
  
Then the administrators at Hope’s Peak moved him to a different dorm. Ouma wasn’t too put out, Gonta could tell. He still had his weird clown friends.  
  
That’s how he met Tsumugi Shirogane. A smart girl, if a bit eccentric. They had all their classes together, and she helped him find his way around. She turned out to be a much better friend than Ouma in most aspects.  
  
She asked him a few untoward questions a couple times. So had Ouma. So had all his friends in the past. When you have an atypical backstory, people will want to know about it. He had resigned himself to this fact a long time ago. It wasn’t really that unexpected.  
  
His friendship with Tsumugi had been nice. Quiet.  
  
He had come home to the room ransacked one day. His side was left generally untouched, sure, but Tsumugi’s was stripped to the bone. There was no letter or anything, she was just… gone.  
  
(When he asked later, they claimed she had been part of a group mongering hopelessness. That she had been conspiring against the school.)  
  
(Another month passed, and when he discovered 3 hidden cameras in his room, he thinks that she might have not been so wrong after all.)  
  
So his room sits empty. You don’t accrue a lot of possessions by living off the land for 10 years. He still went to his classes, read his books, but he still felt like he was in between time period of his life.  
  
A while after being dragged back to civilization, he had felt lost. Like he was swimming across a channel that was running the other way. Not being pushed backwards, but not going forwards either. In a state of uncomfortable livability.  
  
For the first time in a long time, Gonta Gokuhara felt truly adrift.  
  
And then, in the midst of winter’s wrath, the devil came a knocking.  
  
That’s what the other kids said about him, whispering about his past in the hallways as he strode past. They said the only reason he wasn’t in jail was his incredible attorney. They said he was cold blooded. They said that if you got on his bad side he’d kill you.  
  
Hoshi Ryouma, class-proclaimed devil. Gonta’s new burden to bear.  
  
The headmaster had pulled him out of class one day to tell him that if it was too much he would switch him into the older kids’ dorms. Gonta had shaken his head and sighed. At least this time he knew what he was in for.  
  
That wasn’t the case. He had gotten back that night to an essentially unchanged room. New sheets on the other bed. A pill case on the nightstand. A small duffle bag by the door. The bathroom door was closed and he could hear the sound of a shower, so that explained where his new roommate was. He settled onto his beetle-print comforter, flipping open his science textbook. They had placed him at one year above grade level in science, just because his father knew the headmaster, but it still wasn’t enough to keep him engaged. He already knew all this, and while planaria interested him a little, mitosis and the other processes that go hand in hand with it could not have interested him less. He scribbled down a few answers directly into the book before placing it back in his bag. He flipped through a copy of Muse before paging through his bookcase by eye. A time-battered paperback drew his eye, and he slowly but surely extracted the not-so-ancient tome.  
  
Gonta reclined onto his pillows. A few minutes later, the bathroom door creaked open. The man who stepped out of the shower was not the man Gonta had expected.  
  
Ok. So maybe Gonta was basing his whole concept of Hoshi as whole off of whispered rumours. He had never seen the guy for himself, they didn’t have classes together, so what was he supposed to think?  
  
Whatever illusion of grandeur Gonta has devised was shattered by the sweatpants wearing, three foot tall, tired-looking boy standing blearily in the door frame. His hair was wrapped up in a towel above his head, he was dressed in a ratty Wimbledon t-shirt. The only thing that lived up to Gonta’s expectations were his eyes. A deep blue, steely even when glossed over with the pretense of sleep.  
  
He made eye contact with Gonta for a moment before rubbing his fists in his eyes and glancing down at what Gonta had in his hands. He shook his head for a moment.  
  
“...’S that The Jungle?” Hoshi asks.  
  
And that’s where Gonta’s second lie came from.  
  
“No,” he says, because people like him aren’t supposed to read things like that. He was a brute. A giant. Strength was all he was good for. He never got good grades in Language Arts. People like him didn’t read Upton Sinclair for fun.  
  
Hoshi shakes his head and sighs, “That’s definitely The Jungle, buddy. You don’t have to lie to me to keep up the dumb guy act you have goin’ on. I used to have the same copy.”  
  
Gonta blushed, abashed, and looked back at his book. Hoshi shuffled towards his bed. So much for a good first impression.  
  
The next morning, Hoshi is already gone when he gets up. He sees him in the hall once. Wearing a heavy leather jacket and hat with what appear to be devil horns on it, unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth, Hoshi looked a lot different. Gonta understood why people were scared of him.  
  
In Language Arts that day, they share their favourite books. When Gonta writes The Jungle on the board, his teacher gives him a look. Pity, he thinks, but he was never good at identifying others’ emotions. Someone in the back of the class snickers.  
  
It goes like this for a while. Hoshi’s gone before Gonta’s awake, and when he gets home that night, he showers then heads to bed.  
  
One day, Gonta finds a new book on his shelf. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He tears through it in a week. Hoshi smiles when he sees it in Gonta’s hands. It had a lot of politics that Gonta didn’t fully grasp, but his dad had instilled enough fascination for machines in him and his father had impassioned him for those of the animal kingdom that he appreciated it for the submarine and the sea life nonetheless.  
  
Hoshi offhandedly mentioned that he didn’t like the part with the shark. Gonta had to agree.  
  
Second semester started and Gonta switched from Study Hall to Physical Education. He finally had a class with Hoshi, and boy howdy. You wouldn’t guess it from his smaller frame, but that man was a powerhouse when it came to most sports.  
  
It was in this class that he met Iruma Miu. A supposed girl genius, she was a bit crude but she made herself enough of a nuisance that it became futile to resist her supposed attempts at friendship.  
  
They started eating lunch together. With Iruma came her chatter, and Gonta ended up knowing a near suspicious amount about two things. One was the new student, Toujo Kirumi, who Iruma had an apparent infatuation with. The other was her robotics project. She had been calling it Kiibo, which was sort of a strange name, Gonta thought.  
  
Apparently, Iruma was charming enough to actually win over her crush, since Toujo started sitting with them on the field to eat about a week later. She always made her own lunch.  
  
In P.E., they started a unit on lacrosse. Gonta was particularly good at it. Iruma just hit people with the stick and mimed jerking it off. Toujo proved to be incredibly aggressive when it came to sports.  
  
Gonta finished Bridge to Terabithia, Fahrenheit 451, and To Kill a Mockingbird. He started spending more time in the library.  
  
Before he knew it, the school year was over. He went to a ranch for the summer. His father said it would be an ideal experience for all of them. His dad disassembled a tractor and proved once and for all that yes, he actually could ride a horse. His father tamed a coyote. Gonta learned about beekeeping. He felt… fine, he supposed. Pretty neutral about most things. Adrift. Despite his father’s best efforts, he felt like this wasn’t where he belonged.  
  
Iruma visited them once. She lost it when she met his dad, and he wasn’t really sure why, but she was on her best behaviour for the rest of the trip.  
  
She kept shaking him awake in the middle of the night to exclaim, “I can’t believe you never told me you were the son of THE Tanaka Kazuichi!” before running around the guest room for half an hour shaking her hands violently. He was just happy that she was happy.  
  
He wished that he had the time to visit his forest family. He never does.  
  
So, instead, he did things that reminded him of them. He spent his days wandering through the fields looking for familiar bugs, looking for a lizard to talk to. His father understood.  
  
Soon enough, they shipped him back off to school. This time, he had more elective choices. He chose Gardening first semester and Study Hall the next. Rooming arrangements didn’t change.  
  
When he got back to his and Hoshi’s room, Hoshi was already there. He nodded silently when Gonta walked in. Gonta noticed a bit more decor in his half of the room and wondered absentmindedly if he spent his summer here.  
  
Before he can catch himself, it came out of his mouth. Hoshi gave him a pained smile from under his hat.  
  
“Yeah. Don’t really have anywhere to head back to, if you catch my drift,” He answered. There was an edge to his voice that made Gonta think he shouldn’t have asked. He vowed to give Hoshi a bit of space.  
  
That proved difficult, since they turned out to have essentially every class together. They had different electives, of course, but there was still a pretty good view of the field from the school’s garden, so it felt the same. Hoshi rarely looked at him.  
  
On week two back in school, he found a new book on his bookcase. Ishmael. He wasn’t sure if Hoshi was leaving these books for him, or just trying to sneakily find a convenient place for them, but he started it anyways.  
  
One morning, he noticed a letter at the foot of the door. He opened it, expecting to find a letter from his father, or at least from the school, but what it ended up being is a love letter.  
  
Not a love letter for him, no. For Hoshi. He guessed he hadn’t noticed the attention Hoshi had been drawing. Gonta supposed that made sense, after all, Hoshi was incredibly talented when it came to most sports. He wasn’t unattractive either, or at least the flock of people following him from class to class insisted he wasn’t.  
  
Now that Gonta had noticed it, it was obvious. Despite his smaller physique, Hoshi was the ideal bad boy type that people were always gushing over in love songs. Leather jacket, cigarette, mysterious past.  
  
He threw the love letter on Hoshi’s bed. Hoshi chuckled when he read it.  
  
“Just like old times,” He muttered, and Gonta wasn’t sure what that meant.  
  
Hoshi started eating lunch outside. Iruma tried to wave him over every time he glanced in her direction.  
  
“He’s popular!” She tried to explain. Toujo shook her head and smiled. Gonta went back to reading his book. Iruma sighed and threw herself back onto the grass. “You guys are no fun.”  
  
“Yet you sit with us nonetheless,” Toujo remarked. Gonta laughed while Iruma spluttered.  
  
He’d been trying to spend more time on this book. Savoring it. It felt good, Ishmael. It felt like the kind of book you took your time with. He was so glad he had found it.  
  
Eventually, Hoshi migrated over. Iruma’s unabashed desperation for an in to popularity apparently worked to some extent, or maybe it was something else. When he finally just went straight to sitting with them, Iruma had cheered. Gonta offered a tender smile. Toujo offered tea.  
  
“How are you liking that book?” Hoshi had asked one day.  
  
“Ah… It is very good! Gonta is not sure if he understands it in its entirety, but he likes the use of an animal as the voice of reason,” Gonta replied and Hoshi nodded.  
  
“The author was actually gonna use an alien instead of a gorilla in an earlier version. Said it wouldn’t have the same effect since it’d be from an entirely different planet,” Hoshi had said.  
  
“Gonta thinks he was right to make the decision to change that.”  
  
They fell into silence after that. The bell rung. They said goodbye and went off to their respective electives. Gonta did very little gardening that period.  
  
He got a letter from his parents asking if they could come visit over spring break. He said yes. Iruma was a little bit more than excited.  
  
When that day finally arrived, he beat Hoshi out the door for once. He hugged his father tight and his dad even tighter. He walked them through the school. It turned out they knew his Language Arts teacher from their own school days. When they complement Gonta on his excellent performance in their class that year, his father simply beamed and shook their hand.  
  
Gonta finally took them for a tour of the dorms that evening. Hoshi was still there, like he always was on breaks, but Gonta assumed he wouldn’t mind a little invasion of his space.  
  
When he opened the door, Hoshi greeted with him with his typical “Hey, Gokuhara.” without really looking up. He ushered his parents in. At the sound of more footsteps, Hoshi glanced over.  
  
His book fell out of his hand and he sat straight up. Gonta’s father studied his book collection. He slid the most recent addition out of the shelf and checked the cover before smiling.  
  
“Ishmael! An excellent choice, my progeny. Might I ask who recommended this to you?” His father said.  
  
“Ah, Hoshi- actually did.” Gonta gestured to his almost awkwardly unmoving roommate.  
  
“You have commendable taste, young mortal.”  
  
“God, please don’t call my son’s friends mortal,” His dad sighed.  
  
Hoshi stood stock still for a moment before slowly asking, “You wouldn’t happen to be Tanaka Gundham, would you?” Gonta’s father nodded and Hoshi looked he was ready to faint.  
  
“At your service, dear human!” He exclaimed in the way he always did when he got recognized.  
  
“I really admire the work you did on Iriomote,” Hoshi said, his eyes wide “It’s an honour to meet you.”  
  
And from that point on Gonta understood little of the conversation. His dad muttered something about cats and asked Gonta if he had been doing any sketching (he hadn’t).  
  
After his parents left, Hoshi flopped onto his bed. Gonta didn’t really get it but he was glad that Hoshi wasn’t mad at him.  
  
“Sorry if that was weird. That I knew who your dad was,” Hoshi said, his words muffled by the comforter his face was currently buried in. Gonta merely hummed.  
  
The next week went by in a flash. It felt nice to be whole as a family again. He got weird looks, sometimes, but he didn’t let it bother him. After that, it was back to regular life. The only thing that changed was the attention he got.  
  
Iruma said she knew this would happen. Now that people knew his parents were famous (which, apparently, was true) they would start acting differently towards him. What he noticed is how Hoshi seemed to stick even closer to him. The attention they collectively drew was uncomfortable for Hoshi, Gonta thought, but he felt little different for it.  
  
In the coming months, their group grew tighter. Eventually, Toujo became Kirumi. Hoshi became Ryouma. Iruma became Miu. Gokuhara became Gonta.  
  
Ouma invites himself over for a sleepover one day in spring.  
  
They do all the normal sleepover things, or at least Ouma says they do. They watch a raunchy movie, get into a pillow fight (that Gonta very promptly wins), and gossip about their classmates. Well, Ouma gossiped about their classmates. Gonta simply stood witness.  
  
“So I heard,” Ouma started, and Gonta saw a glint in his eye that told him that this was not going to end well. “That there’s a little rumor going around about you and our favourite gremlin are dating.”  
  
“There’s a rumour that you and Gonta are dating?” Ouma rolled his eyes and kicked the roof of the pillow fort above them. Gonta was pretty sure it was going to collapse.  
  
“No, stupid,” Gonta flinched. “You and Hoshi.”  
  
“Ah, yes! Gonta knows,” He said. Oumas smile seemed to shrink by the tiniest amount.  
  
“So, big guy…” Ouma continued. He flipped over onto his back and looked at Gonta upside down. “Is it true?”  
  
Gonta replied, “No,” because they weren’t. Ouma pouted. Then, as Gonta glanced around, his grin slowly rose back onto his face.  
  
“Well, I guess that doesn’t really matter anyways, huh?” He said. “The real question is whether or not you’d like to be.”  
  
And Gonta simply sits and thinks for a moment.  
  
“Gonta doesn’t know.”  
  
Time passed.  
  
Hoshi floated through life. Gonta swam.  
  
More time passed.  
  
Eventually, the year ends. Gonta went home for the summer, with an order from Kirumi to keep safe and call her if anything happened and a promise from Miu that if she actually got her robot up and running she’d invite him and the crew over to meet it.  
  
His father was gone again.  
  
He was off away in another town on the opposite end of Shikoku on another quest to save a species. This time it was one Gonta knew, Libellula angelina, a critically endangered dragonfly native to Japan, China, and Korea. Due to his semi-expertise on the subject of insects in general (an interest of his from a young age only increased by years of catching them with his forest family), his father invited him along.  
  
So Gonta caught a train.  
  
It was in this search for Libellula angelina that he met Amami Rantarou. Amami was a friendly young person. They were always traveling, or so they said. Gonta found solace in their company. Amami was energetic, if talkative, and they were easy to bounce ideas off of.  
  
They took particular interest in his history. They told him it was inspiring, nearly uncanny that they should meet someone like Gonta on their travels. They were looking for their sister, as Gonta later learned, who had disappeared a matter of years ago. They laughed a lot, but there was always a strain in it. Gonta had always been good at spotting fake laughs.  
  
There were certain subjects Amami wouldn’t talk about. Their lover was one, not that Gonta ever really wanted to discuss it in the first place. They had only mentioned him once, a traveler like themself, a slender anthropologist who used to accompany them on their journeys. They loved him, that much clear, and thus made it only clearer that they’d never see him again.  
  
They laughed, and talked, and kept Gonta company as he and his father paraded through the countryside looking for any and all appropriate pools that the dragonfly may have been living in. It took nearly a month. Eventually, they found one. One lone Libellula angelina. Gonta was the one to snap it up, quick with his net. His father had grinned, a smile not unstained with the tell-tale slant of mania, and barely had time to tug Gonta into the car before he sped down the country road to get the poor dragonfly to his father’s breeding center for safe keeping.  
  
Luckily, the Libellula angelina came with. Unluckily, Amami did not. They wave as Gonta tries to tell his father to turn back.  
  
Gonta felt guilty about that for a solid two months. He decided to stay with his dad when his father goes out once again in search for a mate for Rantaro (named after the dearly departed).  
  
About a week before Gonta’s 10th grade year started, Miu called him to the school early. She said she had a surprise for him and that Kirumi and Ryouma would be there. She added on at the end to the rambling phone call that he should bring his dad.  
  
Miu met them at the entrance to the school wearing what Ryouma later pointed out to be her best skirt. She ushered them in, exclaiming welcomes and pushing them towards Mrs. Fujisaki’s room.  
  
Kirumi and Ryouma had already arrived. Kirumi stood like she had a pole for a spine and Ryouma’s slouch shaved another half foot off his already petite frame. Miu paused at the closed double doors.  
  
“So, y’know how I’ve been working on a robot recently?” Miu started hesitantly.  
  
“Yeah, but I had assumed it was more of a sex robot than anything else,” Ryouma muttered and Kirumi subtly kicked him in his thigh. He grunted and shut up.  
  
“Yes, please go on, Miu.”  
  
“Uh. Yeah. So the robot is done,” Miu stuttered out. Gonta thought that was the first time he’d ever seen Miu genuinely nervous aside from when she asked Kirumi out.  
  
His dad smiled and said, “Well, are you going to show us or not?” which, in Gonta’s opinion, was not a great opening line. Miu took a shaky breath.  
  
“Well! Here they are!” She said and finally threw open the door.  
  
The humanoid figure standing in the center of the cluttered room was… strange, to say the least. Gonta had nothing against robots, of course, but the dark metal of the faux uniform, the shiny doll hair. It all seemed so surreal and strange. No one said a word.  
  
“...Go on, Kiibs, say somethin’ to our guests,” Miu muttered as she shuffled up to her creation.  
  
And then, the robot moved. Its arm raised, its blue eyes flickered side to side.  
  
“Good evening, everyone?” It - they said. His dad nearly bowled the android over.  
  
“Holy shit! Holy shit, this thing has an AI? And you fuckin’ taught it to move and speak and everything? Iruma, I am about to have a stroke!” His dad exclaimed and a smile spread over Miu’s face near immediately.  
  
“Hey, now! Please unhand me, Tanaka-sama, I am rather fragile as of right now,” The robot said. Gonta took a step forwards.  
  
“Miu… Gonta thinks that’s amazing!” He reaches out a hand to rest on his dad’s shoulder. Not to comfort him or anything, but Gonta was pretty sure that he’d take the next opportunity to jump on the android. And possibly deconstruct it.  
  
“Well. They can think an’ all that too?” Ryouma said.  
  
“Damn right they can! Mrs. Fujisaki helped a little, I guess, but for the most part, it was me.” Miu replied.  
  
“Huh. Hey, robot.” The android turned its attention to the small figure behind its former aggressor. “You got a name?”  
  
The android smiled and stated, “Yes. It is Kiibo! I am at your service,” before bowing at the hip. Ryouma’s lips twitched.  
  
“I guess Miu still hasn’t taught you contractions.”  
  
“They’re a work in progress,” Miu shrugs.  
  
Kirumi stepped primly to Miu’s side. “I think you’ve done an excellent job, darling.” Miu’s face lit up.  
  
Gonta smiled. His grip loosened and, almost immediately, his dad rushed over to once again harass Kiibo on how he worked. Miu was too engrossed in her girlfriend to notice. Ryouma just chuckled and watched.  
  
Gonta’s dad eventually returned to the hotel where his husband was staying, but by the time it happened Gonta himself was long retired to his room. He lay in his bed and felt significantly bigger than he had felt when he’d left. Ryouma hadn’t returned from his evening jog yet.  
  
He turned over in his bed. He looked at the posters on his wall. There were a couple of places he’d traveled, two his dad got as a gag gift that he genuinely really enjoyed (separate posters of his parents, both with printed on signatures and their names written in big letters on the top), and a couple faded snapshots tacked to the wall taken before… Well. Taken before.  
  
He doesn't know why he still has them pinned up. They always made Gonta a little apprehensive to look at, as if somehow indulging in the nostalgia they exude would take him back to the times before he felt as secure as he does now.

  
To be entirely honest, Gonta had never felt more secure than when he had found himself back at Hope’s Peak with his friends. He was, as always, hesitant to use what seemed like everyone’s favourite word. Not found. He wasn’t sure if he had ever truly been found.  
  
He shut down that train of thought fast. Someone like him didn’t have doubts like that. Someone like him took what he could get. Someone like him was lucky to even have been saved from that forest at all. He’d learned that fast enough, never from his parents, but from the news, the media, himself. It had been drilled into his head. Someone like him was just a happy go lucky idiot who ought to just go to sleep at this point.  
  
The door opened. “Hey Gokuhara. ‘M back.”  
  
Gonta sighed. He flipped onto his back, arms splayed off the bed. Hoshi wiped his forehead and gave him a look.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
And Gonta tells a third and final lie.  
  
“Gonta is fine. Go to sleep, Ryouma.”  
  
So, as it tends to do, time passed. Little by little, they made it through the first semester. Kiibo got permission to attend classes. Ouma gushed about his new crush and endlessly bitched (as Ryouma so professed) about said crushes stupid boyfriend.  
  
Momota Kaito, aforementioned stupid boyfriend, was not nearly as bad as Ouma claimed. He was in Gonta’s robotics class, an elective both had taken for an easy grade. Momota claimed his dad actually WAS a robot, which Gonta didn’t really think was true, but his dad turned out to know Momota’s and only smirked when Gonta had asked. He wasn’t sure if this was a confirmation or a dismissal.  
  
Miu was in the advanced robotics class, and always held it above Momota’s head that despite his parentage (she actually believed Momota’s story; apparently Nidai was a household name in every house but his own.) she had built a full android, and one that she claimed could beat up Momota’s dad any time. Both Kiibo and Momota disputed this supposed fact.  
  
Kiibo became fast friends with Momota and his gang, much to Miu’s chagrin. This, of course, brought many, many more people to sit with Gonta’s little group at lunch. He didn’t mind, Akamatsu and Saihara were both very kind, though Akamatsu’s girlfriend was a little scary.  
  
Momota had taken a liking to Ryouma that made something unknown stir in the pit of Gonta’s stomach. Jealousy, Gonta realized one afternoon as Ryouma laughed heartily about something Momota had said.  
  
And it’s not as if Gonta thought he posed any threat. Momota had a boyfriend, and what would he be posing a threat to anyways? Gonta’s need to be solely focused on, with no room for surpassion? Ryouma had other friends. He was glad. Gonta was glad.  
  
But telling himself that did nothing to cure the sinking feeling he got every time Ryouma leaned in to say something to him that no one else could hear.  
  
The semester ended and Momota and his friends slowly drifted away, Gonta returning to his gardening elective and Momota to his astrology. Gonta had no hard feelings for him, but any that might have lingered were gone in a matter of weeks.  
  
Gonta wasn’t sure what Momota had said, but it was no doubt about Ryouma’s former tennis career. The fallout wasn’t nearly as severe as Ouma made it out to be, claiming his beloved Saihara-chan wouldn’t make time for him, too busy consoling Momota. Ryouma had nothing to say on the subject. Needless to specify, Momota and his crew didn’t talk to them anymore, but Akamatsu still smiled at him in the hallways.  
  
During the semester, Miu discovered something that she declared is “the best motherfucking thing to grace this dump-ass school”. Hope’s Peak was located a little on the outskirts of a small town. It’s not bad for a boarding school, sure, but no one would claim it was the best. For most students, it was a high-end prison. Miu, legally, wasn’t supposed to step foot outside at request of her mother. That rule seemed to apply to most of the school. Gonta’s parents apparently did this out of anxiety about him getting lost for 10 years again. Even if only mentally, Gonta insisted he was never lost.  
  
This stubbornness and literal thinking did him no good when it came to actually getting out of the Seaworld-esque entrapment that his school so happily provided.  
  
What Miu had found was a staircase. It was no ordinary staircase, if she was to be believed, but when Gonta finally got a look at it he wasn’t so sure if her claims actually held up to scientific and practical scrutiny.  
  
“Iruma-san, what are we supposed to be looking at here?” Kiibo asks with genuine curiousness. “I have certainly seen more interesting staircases in Fujisaki-sama’s lab.”  
  
“You ever gonna turn this guy’s honorifics setting off? It’s weird. Nonetheless, I agree with ‘em. This seems pretty run of the mill,” Ryouma adds.  
  
“Would you two shut your traps? I would explain but I have to change Kiibo’s programming now, so thanks I guess!” Miu waved her hands for a second and pressed a button on Kiibo’s chest. Their eyes went blank and their chestplate popped off into Miu’s waiting hand. Beneath the chestplate, there was a glowing blue screen.  
  
“Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re actually doing it,” Ryouma grumbled.  
  
Miu shot back a “You want me to do this or not?” before returning to tapping away at the screen. She slots the chestplate back in and holds the button on their chest down for a few seconds before releasing. Kiibo’s pupils reappeared and they stood up straight before surveying the small closet the group was standing in.  
  
“Mina-san, Ohayo gozaimasu!” Kiibo chirped and Ryouma barely had time to mutter a curse before Kiibo continued on with, “Toujo-chan, Gonta-kun, Nē-chan, ohayo!”  
  
“Jesus, Miu, how did you d-” Ryouma tried to say but was quickly cut off by Kiibo kneeling down and patting him on the head.  
  
“Ah, Hoshi-bō! Ohayo!” Kiibo quipped.  
  
Ryouma punched them in the neck.  
  
“Miu…” He started to say but Miu had already slapped the button on the back of their neck that had been well established as the reset button.  
  
“Excuse me, while I know we’re having a lot of fun reprogramming our dear friend Kiibo, I would still like to know what might be up these stairs,” Kirumi chimed in from the back and Gonta nodded his head.  
  
“Gonta really would like to know.”  
  
Miu flipped her hair out of her face and smiled. “A’ight, babes, let’s get a move on!”  
  
As they climbed the stairs, the dust seemingly embedded in the air thickened. By Gonta’s guess, no one had been up there in a long time. There was little light aside from the phone flashlight Miu held high above her head, but even then Gonta was bringing up the rear and the artificial glow of that did him little good.  
  
When the small group reached the end of the staircase, there was another small room. It had a door on one wall, which Miu quickly kicked open. As soon as she did, Gonta felt some of the must of the staircase draft out into the… the open air.  
  
Miu strutted out onto the roof of the Engineering building like she was walking a runway. Gonta rushed out onto the deck, breathing in the fresh air. The view from up here was beautiful, the rolling hills to the east and the small town past the school to the west. Gonta gasped as he took it all in.  
  
“Miu, this is… beautiful.”  
  
Ryouma huffed out a breathy laugh. “You’ve got that right.” Miu simply smiled.  
  
“Ain’t cameras up here, so do whatever you want. I left Kiibs downstairs on lookout duty.”  
  
Ryouma laughed again and walked to the edge of the roof. Gonta was right behind him. Below them was the fence around the school, but Gonta was sure that if he tried hard enough, he could simply jump over that and to freedom.  
  
A clunk behind him brought him back to the present.  
  
“Watch out, girl genius coming through,” Miu muttered, pushing past them. She was hoisting a ladder over her shoulder which, as Gonta soon realized, was mostly being supported by Kirumi. Miu lowered it down onto the grass outside of the fence. With a grin, she clambered down it.  
  
Kirumi hopped down the ladder next. Ryouma stepped down with careful footfalls, hesitant. Soon enough, it was only Gonta left up on the roof.  
  
He climbed down, shucking his shoes off as soon as he got off the final step. He felt the grass beneath his feet, the dirt and the weeds and the earth. It had felt so long since he had been free to run among whatever wildlife there was out there; he nearly frolicked, running around trees and looking in bushes for some small animal to talk to. The air in his lungs felt so much more natural, so much more real than it had in the past few months.  
  
“Jesus, calm down. What are you, Gundh-” Miu starts, and Gonta assumes that she must have remembered that while he may not have his father’s last name, Dr. Tanaka had had a decent hand in raising him. “Anyways. The reason I brought all y’all out here was to show you the sickest place. Just follow me.”  
  
And they do, but with several delays, not an insignificant amount involving Gonta running after an insect he recognized.  
  
The spot Miu took them was high on a hill. She claimed it was hidden from Hope’s Peak by the grove of trees they had passed through, but Gonta was skeptical nonetheless. It seemed perfect for stargazing. There wasn’t much in the way of its view to the horizon.  
  
They stayed there for a little while, chatting, but they could still hear the school bell from the top of the hill. The ladder nearly got knocked over in their scramble to get back into the school in time for their afternoon classes.  
  
If Gonta were to think back on it, that hill became a pivotal part in his friendships. Though, of course, it wouldn’t be until later he found that out.

 

For the time being, he was satisfied to have the opportunity to simply sit in the sun.

 

First, it was with Miu.  
  
Miu had always been a wild card - around her, one came to expect the unexpected. And thus, when she asked Gonta to accompany her in skipping afternoon classes out of the blue one Thursday a few weeks after she’d found the stairs, he did not consider this an outlandish suggestion coming from her.  
  
She’d brought her lunch, and had texted Kirumi to let her know where she was. They sat up on the hill, admiring the spring flowers that had popped up among the weeds and grass and making idle chatter. They talked about the sun, and their classmates, and animals. Gonta told her about his most recent discovery (there were larvae in the garden that neither he nor any of the other students recognized) and she told him about Kiibo.  
  
“Making an AI is fuckin’ hard, y’know? Plus, you gotta update it and do tweaking on speech pattern and all that,” Miu rambled. Gonta nodded his head. The sun was on the horizon.  
  
“Gonta thinks he understands. It must be a lot of work for one person.”  
  
Miu sighed. “You’ve got that right. An’ sure, I’ve got Mrs. Fujisaki but… it’s just a lot of responsibility.” And Gonta finally took a good look at her.  
  
Miu looked… frazzled. Her hair seemed untidy, the bags under her eyes had deepened. She was wearing the same clothes as she had worn yesterday. The carefree smile she tended to wear was a little less than carefree.  
  
“Kiibo, they’re - they’re a whole person. And I made them. I can change them at will; I have complete and utter control over a real, conscious, almost living person. It’s,” And Miu bit out a laugh, “It’s terrifying! In the past month or so, they’ve become a lot more independent and aware of me and what I do and I’m just absolutely terrified of what’s gonna happen when they ask for something I can’t give them.”  
  
Her voice broke and her eyes were wet, but Gonta was sure she wasn’t going to cry. And yet, despite his doubts, her tears fell, and fell, and fell.  
  
She sniffs, “Sorry, I shouldn’t be burdening you with my moral dilemmas. An’ I really shouldn’t be crying, either,” and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.  
  
“Miu, it’s alright. Gonta understands that it must be emotionally draining to manage all that.” He leaned over to comfort her and she wrapped her arms around him. He did the same.  
  
“Thanks, Gonta,” She muttered and they stayed like that for a while, simply holding each other. Gonta knew what she needed to be told, what she needed to be done. Gonta knew what it was like to feel lost.  
  
And with that, life drifted on. The semester ended, and thus, Gonta’s entrapment in Hope’s Peak ended as well. He returned to his home on the outskirts of town, settling into a quiet routine.  
  
In the mornings, he woke up at 9. He made himself and his dad breakfast. By then, his father would either be asleep or gone. As his dad ate his breakfast one-handedly, typically already knee deep in machinery of some sort or another. He would wander into the small hamlet they lived outside of and see what caught his attention that day. By 5, he would go home again and read until 7 or so when he would whip up something edible for his dad to rip through like a starving animal. Their dinners were usually over by 8:30, at which time he would return to his room and continue to read.  
  
Though this schedule provided him some pretty decent area to roam, his town was only so big. It was only a matter of time before he ran out of things to chase after and watch. So, he took up another hobby.  
  
The flower shop in town has always been run by the Chabashiras. He goes there every day for nearly a month before they ask him what he’s doing.  
  
“Gonta is testing!” He replied and placed a carnation on the checkout desk.  
  
The girl standing behind it seemed to raise her hackles. “Testing what?” She asked. “It better not be anything gross! Tenko knows what degenerates like you test…”  
  
Gonta shook his head and quickly stuttered out, “N-no! Gonta is simply seeing which one attracts honeyb-” before he was quickly chopped over the head.  
  
“Attracting honeys! Tenko knew it. Tenko knew you were some creep.”  
  
“Please, Chabashira, Gonta’s talking about bees! Attracting bees!” Gonta tried to defend himself, but just as soon he batted away Chabashira’s attacking hands, the bell above the door rang.  
  
Another woman trudged through the door and sleepily inspected the scene. She had short cropped ruby red hair, a white blazer, and a scarlet maxi dress that extended a bit past her knees.  
  
Chabashira immediately froze as she approached, giving Gonta the opportunity to scurry out of her arm range.  
  
“Hey, Tenko… G’morning, green guy...” She muttered before joining Chabashira behind the counter. Chabashira straightened up and seemed to put on her best face.  
  
“Good morning, Yumeno. How is your mother doing?” Chabashira asked with cheeriness she had so lacked in her conversation with Gonta moments before.  
  
“Doin’ fine, I guess. Same as always,” Yumeno said. “Who’s this?”  
  
Chabashira looked pointedly at him. “You don’t need to worry about him, Yumeno. He was just leaving.” The daggers Chabashira shot out of her eyes gave him reason enough to hightail it. He decided on gathering his own flowers from then on.  
  
He found his father in town, one day, speaking to a woman with that same ruby red hair. It seemed that Mrs. Yumeno was not always Mrs. Yumeno. Her maiden name was Mahiru Koizumi, or so his father said. She had also gone to school with the pair of them, though they hadn’t been close.  
  
In around a month after school ended, his father was done with saving the gharials or whatever it had been this time, and thus returned to his domestic life.  
  
Mornings in the country were golden. The scent of pancakes and honey, his father’s soft rock, light flowing through his curtains. The sound of some old-fashioned love song as he rose to dress himself in a sheer cardigan and his slacks. The flutter of pages and the clink of cutlery as he joined his parents at the kitchen table.  
  
This sweet relaxation didn’t last for long. He knew it wouldn’t, of course, his family was always traveling. This time it was to LA for a week, his father being called by some architect to check out the new earthquake-proof foundation they had planned. Gonta’s parents took it as an opportunity to visit a friend they hadn’t talked to in a while.  
  
The friend they were visiting was rich, to say the least. The moment Gonta stepped into his restaurant, he could tell that. The lighting was low, the decorations shiny, the ambiance of condescending wealth. Gonta was guaranteed to get overwhelmed. His dad looked perfectly at home. His father looked ready to pass out.  
  
Mr. Mitarai himself was waiting at their booth when they arrived. The polite small talk was enough for Gonta, but all too soon did the conversation turn to topics he didn’t really understand.  
  
“Yes, Mioda’s progeny certainly is something else,” His father remarked.  
  
“She really is! Y-y’know, just looking at the hair colour one would think she wasn’t Ibuki’s kid but uh, but S-” And Mitarai stopped halfway through his remark. He stumbled for a moment, eyes glancing towards Gonta’s father before returning to something far away. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s alright,” His father muttered. “You may say her name.”  
  
“No, no, I should have been more careful. Sorry, Tanaka.”  
  
“I would have realized some time or another.” Mitarai looked uncomfortable.  
  
“Sonia… let’s not talk about that,” The animator backtracks. “Did I tell you guys about my son?”  
  
And that’s how Gonta comes to learn of Momota’s presence in his immediate vicinity.  Mitarai was a quiet supporter of seemingly everyone he met, his stepson no exception, and it was through this support that Gonta learned a frankly preposterous amount about Kaito Momota. However, the oppressive environment of the restaurant didn’t let him learn as much as he may have been able to.  
  
He excused himself for a breath of fresh air. His father came with him.  
  
They stood in the warm evening air and inhaled the scent of rising civilization. Gonta’s father was just a little bit shorter than him, with a slimmer build and salt and pepper hair whitened prematurely with stress and overexertion. He wore 2 inch heels everywhere despite the fact he worked outdoors. His coats were long, his breathing shallow, his laughs loud and awkward. He acted a lot like Gonta did, sometimes, when it came down to it. Neither of them were naturally great with people, though his father's lack of social skills was a lot more apparent.  
  
The silence that engulfed them was not awkward, per say, but something more along the lines of uncomfortable understanding.  
  
His father’s simple statement of, “You probably want to know about Sonia,” brought him back to the present.  While it wasn’t untrue, Gonta didn’t want to upset his father too much.  
  
“Gonta is not pressuring you to tell him,” he half whispered.  
  
“You may as well know.” Around his family, his father’s otherworldly pretenses were for the most part dropped, but his speech still retained its whimsical edge. “The Lady Novoselic was a fair weather friend of mine, many years ago, who befriended me out of what I thought was pure intrigue. This turned out to not be the case.” He paused for a moment, evened his breath. “She… I would hesitate to say this garnered the word use, but I was taken advantage of. Out of the scarcity of goodness in my heart, I used my talent to revitalize a specific animal in her country. After that, she threw me out.” He took another breath. Gonta hadn’t seen his father this upset in no small amount of time. “I felt betrayed. It was around this time when I reunited with your father.  
  
“We were both still in our young adulthood, and with your mother gone, we ended up leaning on each other for support. You’ve surely heard this story before, but I was the one who finally got a lead on finding you all those years ago. Though it seemed like millennia, it must have been only a few years since then. I always had an unnatural talent with animals, though my prowess didn’t come to the eyes of the public until my early twenties. It was this gift that lead us to you.  
  
“I understand that deep within you, there is an element of resentment when it comes to your… your extraction, I suppose I should say, from what you had made into your home. I was almost surprised when you took such a liking to me. Even more surprised when you hardly mentioned my presence, calling me your father so easily. It’s one of the things they always sent you in for.”  
  
His father looked out into the dark street, staring at each passing car as if it was his only anchor to the rest of the world besides the brick he was leaning up against.  
  
“If I was your biological father I would have said you’d gotten your eccentricities from me. I apologize, of course, if I have been talking too much about myself, but there was little doubt I had ASD when they sent me in for assessment. I thought it would be the same way with you, but, I’m afraid the circumstances are somewhat different.” His father sighed, and Gonta wondered how they had gotten on this subject in the first place. “I have gotten off on a tangent, it seems. Even the best of us are prone to rambling, eh?” He nudges Gonta with a bony elbow, and when Gonta looks him in the eyes for only the briefest of moments (all his father can typically manage), he can see the glint of a distinct wetness in them.  
  
“Ah, Gonta supposes so,” He mumbles in reply.  
  
His father takes a deep breath and says, “Let us rejoin those fools, shall we?”, gesturing towards the front doors. Gonta nods in reply, and they rejoin an apprehensive Mitarai and a babbling dad.  
  
The rest of the night went well, if the almost impalpable tension between Mitarai and his father counted for naught, as his father so claimed. Gonta would have liked to believe him.  
  
And, in about a week’s time, they returned to their small house. Retired to the sweet domesticity, his father traveled no more. The contraption in his dad’s workshop became all the more complex, gaining more bells and whistles that Gonta could count. He sent letters to Ryouma, presents to Kirumi, and compliments to Miu. Kiibo was learning, or so she said. He had become a lot more self-aware. Gonta was pretty sure it worried her.  
  
Kirumi had taken on a summer job, as she always did, working for some high up government official. She never told Gonta who it was, or what their position was, but it was needless to say that she was getting paid no small amount. She was saving up for something, she had written to him, and she was pretty close to having enough. She said she would show it to him when school was back in session. Gonta sent her pressed flowers, and jars of honey. She said her boss sent his compliments. It was apparently lovely on toast with butter. Gonta was pretty sure normal people didn’t eat their toast with honey AND butter, but he wasn’t one to question the government. As long as the prime minister kept up what he was doing to repair the economy after that old Ishi-whoever had gone and got corrupt. It was said the current prime minister was his grandson. But that all was only what Gonta had heard on the radio and bits and piece of from Kirumi. Like he’d said, he wasn’t one for politics.  
  
Ryouma’s summer plans were pretty uncomplicated. He had found himself someone to look after him; not a part of his family, no, but an old family friend. She was a martial artist, and the pictures Ryouma sent of her made Gonta laugh at the thought of how much this old woman seemed to dwarf him. Ryouma had met her wife when he was only a child, through some sports tournament or something, though he hardly made the story clear. But he seemed taken care of, and that was enough for Gonta.  
  
Summer felt like forever, yet at the same time only a day. It was only a matter of time before Gonta returned to his last year of education at Hope’s Peak. Resignation was the key to an easy goodbye. Gonta was pretty sure some famous person had said that once. And thus for the last few weeks of summer, he resigned himself to packing his bag and mastering the art of making a decent pancake.  
  
One of these tasks was accomplished, and surprisingly enough, it was the pancake one. When Gonta rushed to the airport a few hours before his flight left, his hardly folded suits were practically flying out of his suitcase.  
  
He was lucky enough not to lose anything, though he hadn’t a clue where his sunglasses had ended up. The flight to Hope’s peak wasn’t long. He passed his time by finally fulfilling his dad’s request to sketch more.  
  
Ryouma was already there when he arrived at school. He was dressed casually, his usual leather jacket replaced with a simple Hawaiian shirt halfway unbuttoned. These changes were nothing of the ordinary, yet it still warmed Gonta’s heart to see him.  
  
“Gokuhara,” Hoshi said with a smile. “Welcome back.”  
  
Miu and Kirumi arrived together, laughing and talking. They had spent the summer together. Miu recanted their activities, tales of adventures Gonta was almost entirely sure that Kirumi would later reveal the tired truth of. But there was no harm in letting Miu have a little fun in her hyperbole.  
  
Senior year was chaos. The only refuge Gonta maintained was the time he spent in his room, listening to whatever Hoshi put on, and sneaking out of Hope’s Peak to watch the sun set. His friends came out with him, sometimes. Often enough he preferred to go it alone. Sometimes it was better that way.  
  
People told Gonta things. That was funny, and he had always thought it was. It was one of the big changes coming back to human society. In his years in the forest, he didn’t really have to worry about that. These things, though rarely useful and even more rarely understandable, were a constant in Gonta’s life.  
  
Kirumi was something of an exception to this rule.  
  
Now, this was not to say she was better than any of Gonta’s other friends. She was simply… quieter. If Gonta got down to thinking about it, they had almost every corner of the noise spectrum in their single friend group.  
  
Often enough, she would accompany him on his (somewhat illegal) escapades to the spot Miu had found last year. They stayed out late, snuck back in under the guise of night. Listened to music, if they wanted to. Made conversation if they felt like it. Kirumi enjoyed traditional compositions but also had a taste for jazz. Gonta liked piano. They talked about classes. They shared opinions, ideas, recommendations. Sometimes they spoke of the sky and the forest, the sea and the earth, the planets yet undiscovered and strangers still unmet. Sometimes they didn’t speak at all.  
  
On a night in October, gentle coffeehouse jazz lazily floating around him, after hours of quiet stoicism, Kirumi decided to speak.  
  
“Once we both get stable incomes, I think I’m going to ask Miu to marry me.”  
  
She didn’t say anything more for a long time. They stared out into the autumn air. Their playlist looped.  
  
“Gonta is happy for you.”  
  
Kirumi smiled. “Thank you.”  
  
The music continued.  
  
Time marched on.  
  
Kirumi stopped coming with him as much. It was nothing personal, and he knew that, it was a matter of studying & making time for her girlfriend. And yet, he still found it within him to see his nights outside and alone as something akin to melancholic.  
  
He spent winter break at the school with Ryouma. Though he had found a place for the summer, it wasn’t guaranteed year-round. Neither of them really celebrated the holidays.  
  
However, gift-giving season was gift giving season all the same.  
  
Gonta decided the logical choice of gift for Hoshi was not something physical. Hoshi wasn’t really one for possessions, really. He had a couple of things he liked to keep around to spruce up the room they shared or things he needed for class, but still. He wasn’t the sort of guy you gave a new racket and were done with.  
  
So Gonta gave him what he thought Hoshi would appreciate: time.  
  
Over winter break, they spent a lot of time inside. Gonta didn’t like this, due to his natural tendency to spend most his time in the open air, but Hoshi didn’t seem to mind. They played games together, talked, read, slept, and read some more. Gonta was reading The Jungle Book (a strange overlooking on his park up until now) and Hoshi 1984. He wanted to get his hands on a copy of Infinite Jest, but packages did not get delivered fast to Hope’s Peak.  
  
But since Gonta couldn’t get him that, he volunteered his bookcase as a library. The librarian had gone home for the holidays. Gonta thought she deserved it, Mrs. Fukawa hardly got to see her wife most of the time. She had a lovely little portrait of the two of them at their wedding. There were a couple figures Gonta didn’t recognize, but he was pretty sure he had seen the Headmaster and Mrs. Fujisaki with their respective partners. But no matter how happy Gonta was for her, it was a fact nonetheless that her absence meant their restriction from the library.  
  
Gonta enjoyed reading outside. He was the caretaker of the garden as well, although the president had stayed for the winter. She was doing something for another club (environmentalism, maybe?) that really seemed more like a cult than anything else. So it was Gonta’s job to make sure their forget me nots didn’t die.  
  
When it finally came down to it, Gonta and Ryouma spent their last days of break sitting in the snow on the hill. In was cold, as one would assume, but they wrapped up tight. They gave each other their gifts on the 25th, though neither of them were really religious. Gonta got a scarf and a key to the library that he’s sure Hoshi did not get from Mrs. Fukawa. Miu and Kirumi came back a day before school started again. Gonta wasn’t sure where they had gone, and frankly he felt bad asking. Hoshi sank as school started back up again. Though he had never been one for the routine of school, he seemed to languish at his loss of fresh air.

 

But, Gonta believed, this restoration of his group was just what the doctor ordered. He pushed for them to go out more but the more he pushed the more scheduling issues there seemed to be.

 

As classes passed on and Hoshi drifted farther and farther away, Gonta’s senior year was coming to an end. There was something akin to 2 weeks left of school and Gonta knew the teachers weren’t going to try to teach him anything new. So he did what he thought was best.

 

It was after class one day that he had the third and final moment. He’d invited Hoshi to the hilltop that morning, though he hadn’t gotten much of a response. Gonta showed up anyways.

 

At around 5:07 was when Hoshi deigned to show up. He sat down next to Gonta facing the sowly setting sun.

 

“I didn’t really think you’d wait,” He muttered into the silence. Gonta smiled. “Thanks for getting me up here, I guess.” He shuffled his legs out from under him and onto Gonta’s picnic blanket. “Why’d you want to see me?”

 

“Gonta just did.”

 

Hoshi sniffed. “Huh.”

 

The wind blew through Gonta’s hair. His phone was propped up on a rock playing old jazz, quiet and muffled. Hoshi dug a fist into the grass.

 

“Are you gonna ask me what’s been going on?”

 

“No,” Gonta said, with no dishonesty. “Gonta just wanted to make Hoshi feel better.”

 

“Huh.”

 

They sat in silence for a while. Despite it being early June, there was still a frost in the air. Gonta was thankful for the slow radiation of Hoshi’s body heat. Hoshi chuckled.

 

“God, you never make things easy, huh?” He muttered. He stood up abruptly, stumbling slightly on the edge of the blanket. Gonta reached out and clasped Hoshi’s hand in his.

 

Like this, hand in hand, they reached a stalemate. Hoshi simply stared back at him, and Gonta could do nothing but the same. Eventually, Hoshi sat down again, careful not to let go. Letting out a sigh, he collapsed onto Gonta’s side. Warmth pooled between them.

 

“I love you, you know,” Hoshi exhaled. “I have from the beginning.”

 

“Gonta has always loved you back.”

 

And in this snapshot, the sun setting and the wind blowing, fresh air in their lungs, Gonta thinks that he might have just been found.

**Author's Note:**

> \- dats all folks!
> 
> \- KUDOS to give judas one more spike of serotonin COMMENT to make him emerge from his cave and thank you
> 
> \- find me on twitter @ rivalzkun or rivalzaku!


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